


Roll the Die

by geesenoises



Category: Free!
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 06:55:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geesenoises/pseuds/geesenoises
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six love stories. A character study of Kou.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roll the Die

**Author's Note:**

> Part one of six.

It’s autumn and too cold to swim outside anymore, so the team spends a weekend draining and cleaning the pool for the season. As team captain, Makoto is usually the one who locks up and leaves last with Haruka, but today he’s on babysitting duty for the twins and Kou smiles and waves him off. Rei and Nagisa have left for the main school building to drop off some boxes with Ama-chan-sensei. Kou is doing final checks on all the clubhouse locks when she spots Haruka kneeling and staring forlornly at the tarp covering the empty pool.

Surpressing a chuckle, Kou joins him on the deck. “I thought you would’ve left with Makoto-senpai.”

“I wasn’t done securing the tarp.”

“It looks perfect to me. Come on; you can walk me to the train station.”

Haru nods and gets up, grabbing his bag off the ground and casting one last longing glance at the covered pool. Kou locks the gate and hands the ring of keys to Haru so he can drop them off with Makoto on his way home.

They walk together and talk about club-related things—what swimming at the indoor gym will be like, how Rei is finally getting the hang of the other strokes—with long gaps of unadorned silence between topics.

When they get to the train station, Kou turns to say bye and see you tomorrow but suddenly Haru is close and he lifts a hand to tilt her chin up and kiss her. It’s light, more like a faint brush of the lips than a kiss, and over in less than a second. Kou stares at him, stunned—more at the fact that Haru would kiss anyone, than the fact that Haru has kissed her in particular.

“I didn’t know…”

Haru blinks at her and looks faintly surprised himself. “I don’t think I did either,” he admits, which is exactly like him, acting on impulse rather than thought.

Kou starts to say something when her train pulls into the station. She yelps and fumbles around in her bag for her pass. As Kou jogs to catch the doors, words like ‘sorry’ and ‘I have to go’ and ‘we’ll talk’ come tumbling out of her mouth instead of anything meaningful.

Dinner is ready when she gets home, so she eats with her mother and tells her about the silly things the boys did while cleaning the pool. Then Kou excuses herself and sits in her room, staring blankly out the window. She thinks about calling Chigusa, because you’re supposed to call your girlfriends after you’ve been kissed by a boy. Then she thinks about calling Makoto, because he understands Haruka better than anybody. She even thinks briefly about calling her brother, because he’s her brother and because there’s a part of him that understands Haru too. Kou doesn’t end up calling anyone, mostly because she wants this to be a puzzle she can work out on her own and partly because she doesn’t know what sort of advice she wants to hear anyway. She spends the rest of the night deliberately acting like a club manager rather than a girl who’s been kissed and comes up with a training plan that incorporates the commute between school and the gym.

It drags on for a week. They spend the entire time subtly adjusting their orbits around one another, leaving the kiss hanging inert between them. Kou bosses the boys around with her usual enthusiasm and Haru remains stoic. She isn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that neither of them seems inclined to address the issue.

The team takes the train to the gym together after school. Kou talks animatedly with Nagisa during the ride. Haruka catches her eye at one point and she holds his usual implacable, unreadable gaze for a moment before she has to look away. She kicks them all off the train a stop early and forces them to run the rest of the way to the gym.

Kou watches them out the window until she can’t see them anymore. She sits back with a sigh, and tries to unpack her thoughts one more time. There’s a part of her that thinks she owes it to herself to not get so involved with another emotionally constipated, water obsessed teenage boy. She had to set up an entire swim club to connect with Rin, so who knows what hoops she would have to jump through (waterfalls she would have to jump off?) to make a relationship work with Haruka. But Kou has always been a person of action and this inertia is driving her insane.

When the boys get to the gym, out of breath but in good spirits, Kou is waiting with drinks. 

“Good time,” she says as she hands them out. “But you should work on getting even faster next week.”

Nagisa immediately suggests they race each other tomorrow and sets increasingly ridiculous stakes for the loser. Kou makes use of the distraction. She hangs on to Haru’s drink for a moment. “Can we talk after practice?”

Haruka nods, as if he’s been expecting this all along, and Kou thinks briefly about how unfair it is that he can have so much composure. Haru looks like he’s about to say something but Makoto calls them over, ready to sign in and start practice.

Practice goes as usual. Kou lays out their training regimen and the boys run drills. Between laps, Haru catches Makoto and says something to him. Makoto eyes widen in surprise, but agrees to whatever the other boy has said, and practice goes on. When their time at the gym is up, Haru disappears. Nagisa looks to Makoto for an explanation, but the captain just shrugs and attributes it to Haruka’s usual contrary ways.

Rei and Nagisa leave for the train together at a jog, eager to fit in more training. Makoto lingers back with Kou. It takes one look for her to know that he knows something—of course he does—but Kou isn’t sure she’s ready to have this conversation twice in one afternoon and certainly not with a third party.

“Gou-chan...” He pauses, looking sheepish. “Sometimes the simplest solution is the one that works best.”

_Maybe I should have called him after all_ , Kou thinks wryly. She’d asked Haruka to talk, but she hadn’t really reached a decision yet. She wasn’t even sure there was a decision to be made—part of her feels like the kiss was merely one of Haruka’s imprudent compulsions, and that somebody would step in at any moment and wrangle him back from the edge. But here Makoto is, crumbling all of that away in one sentence.

Kou is working up a response when Makoto spots something behind her and bids her a hasty farewell. She is unsurprised when she turns around and finds Haru there. He looks at her almost expectantly, as if it is a foregone conclusion that she should take the lead. And Kou supposes that it is, since she was the one who called this meeting.

“Let’s walk,” she says. Haru follows a half step behind her. They walk through a few streets like this, silent while Kou fights down her thudding heart and works out what to say. Haru is patient, willing to wait her out. Finally, the silence gets too heavy and Kou swings around to face him.

“I’m just not sure that this is the best idea. We have the swim club, and you’re training for the nationals, and, and there’s my brother to consider, too. It would just be... difficult,” she concludes lamely.

“You don’t like me,” Haru says, testing the statement rather than asking a question. 

Kou’s nerves drain away and her heart skitters to a halt. It seems like an obvious thing to think about, but Kou never really stopped to consider feelings, only logistics. _The simplest solution_. “N-no, it’s not that...”

“It doesn’t have to be complicated.” Haru looks at her shyly, and Kou suddenly feels a sense of giddiness rising in her chest from catching sight of a hairline crack in that resolute composure of his. A signal, like a sliver of light, telling her that he has some stake in this too. That maybe Kou isn’t alone in wondering and worrying.

“I guess it doesn’t,” she agrees. Kou has been agonizing about this all week but it all comes down to this one moment. The simplest solution is this: Kou should stop fighting herself. And so she does.

Kou fits Haruka’s hand into her own. His grip tightens in her’s when she leans in, pulls his head down, and kisses him, deeply and deliberately.

_This is a decision. This is a choice._

**Author's Note:**

> There's the first part done! The other parts will feature other Kou pairings, but who knows when those will be done. I'm working on it, but I'm very slow. Thanks for reading!


End file.
